Langhorne Creek Writers’ Festival, South Australia
Langhorne Creek is one of the many wine growing districts of South Australia. It is less than a hour’s drive from the capital city Adelaide and even closer to my home town.
Wine and writing as well as wine and reading go hand in hand, one complementing the other.
So it is no surprise that the Alexandrina Council is supporting and promoting the Langhorne Creek Writers’ Festival to be held later this year.
There is also a writing competition but unfortunately this closes in a few days’ time; if you hurry you may get your entry in on time.
Dates: September 21 – October 19th
Links:
City of Salisbury Writers’ Festival 2013
As far as writers’ festivals in Australia, South Australia has led the way for decades. Writers’ Week has been an important and much loved feature of the Adelaide Festival of Arts every two years since the 1970s. The festival and its Writers’ Week is now an annual event from this year. It is held in March when the weather here is often perfect for outdoor events such as the Writers’ Week.
In the last few years several other smaller festivals for writers have emerged in different parts of the state. Salisbury Writers’ festival is probably the leading one, and the one with the longest history. It is sponsored heavily by the City of Salisbury in the northern parts of the greater Adelaide metropolitan area. I attended on one day several years ago and thoroughly enjoyed the day.
There is an extensive programme of events and various competitions as well. Click on the website address to find out details.
Festival dates: August 23rd to September 6th 2013
Website and programme details: Click here.
Further reading:
Writing a novel – a writer’s journal part 10
No Comments »24th July, 2009; Category: Blogging, Competitions, Fiction, Master of Arts course, Novels, The Writer's Life, Writing a novel, Writing for Children
The Frustrations of the Writer’s Life
It has been a long time since my last entry in this series of articles. I have been very busy finishing off my course work for my degree. Then I had a stay in hospital followed closely by my wife having a stay in hospital too. On top of all that, I have had a very serious bout of influenza over the last three weeks with nine consecutive days in bed.
Over recent days I have managed to get back into writing my children’s novel. This will be submitted in November this year as the major part of my thesis paper. I have been getting rather stressed out by the fact that my supervising lecturer would like to see a draft copy of the manuscript by the end of July. Eeek – that’s a week away. Losing much of the last six weeks has put me way behind. I am so blessed to have a very understanding and compassionate supervisor.
Her compassion is very welcome, but the novel will not write itself. In the coming three months I will have to work very hard to get this project completed. The only way to accomplish that is to plonk myself in front of the keyboard and write, write, write. One of the additional frustrations is that I have other projects on the go. I have another two novels and four picture book texts almost ready to submit to publishers, as well as numerous short stories and poems ready to submit or enter into competitions. I need a thirty hour day and a ten day week!
One very practical solution would be to stop blogging and get back to writing the novel. It’s all a matter of application and priorities.
Good writing.
- Writing a novel – a writer’s journal – a series of articles outlining the process I went through in writing a novel.
How sweet it is
How sweet it is to get paid for one’s writing!
I received the cheque in the mail today for the prize winning poem I entered in a recent competition. Nice to be acknowledged in a competition – and get paid for it. It has inspired me to write more poems and stories and send them off to publishers. It has also spurred me on to get the many manuscripts of books ready for sending off too. I have a nice little collection of texts for picture books and novels for children just waiting for a final edit and a cover letter.
In addition to the cheque I also received a lovely certificate as the winning poet. Nice.
Good writing.
Prize Winning Poetry
Yahoo – I’m doing the writer’s jig again and again and again.
I just received notification this morning that I have won first prize in a Literary Competition. It was for a suite of poems in sonnet form and was entered in the Traditional Rhyming Poetry section. The competition was conducted by Freexpression magazine here in Australia, though entries were received from a number of countries.
It was hard work – a labour of love I guess. But getting recognition like this is very encouraging, especially seeing some of the place getters are frequent competition winners.
And the cash prize is very nice.
Check out some of my poetry here.
Good writing.